"Don't worry yourself about that;" laughed Pao-yü. "She will certainly know what I mean."
Ch'ing Wen, at this rejoinder, had no help but to take the handkerchiefs and to go to the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, where she discovered Ch'un Hsien in the act of hanging out handkerchiefs on the railings to dry. As soon as she saw her walk in, she vehemently waved her hand. "She's gone to sleep!" she said. Ch'ing Wen, however, entered the room. It was in perfect darkness. There was not even so much as a lantern burning, and Tai-yü was already ensconced in bed. "Who is there?" she shouted.
"It's Ch'ing Wen!" promptly replied Ch'ing Wen.
"What are you up to?" Tai-yü inquired.
"Mr. Secundus," explained Ch'ing Wen, "sends you some handkerchiefs,
Miss."
Tai-yü's spirits sunk as soon as she caught her reply. "What can he have sent me handkerchiefs for?" she secretly reasoned within herself. "Who gave him these handkerchiefs?" she then asked aloud. "They must be fine ones, so tell him to keep them and give them to some one else; for I don't need such things at present."
"They're not new," smiled Ch'ing Wen. "They are of an ordinary kind, and old."
Hearing this, Lin Tai-yü felt downcast. But after minutely searching her heart, she at last suddenly grasped his meaning and she hastily observed: "Leave them and go your way."
Ch'ing Wen was compelled to put them down; and turning round, she betook herself back again. But much though she turned things over in her mind during the whole of her way homewards, she did not succeed in solving their import.
When Tai-yü guessed the object of the handkerchief, her very soul unawares flitted from her. "As Pao-yü has gone to such pains," she pondered, "to try and probe this dejection of mine, I have, on one hand, sufficient cause to feel gratified; but as there's no knowing what my dejection will come to in the future there is, on the other, enough to make me sad. Here he abruptly and deliberately sends me a couple of handkerchiefs; and, were it not that he has divined my inmost feelings, the mere sight of these handkerchiefs would be enough to make me treat the whole thing as ridiculous. The secret exchange of presents between us," she went on to muse, "fills me also with fears; and the thought that those tears, which I am ever so fond of shedding to myself, are of no avail, drives me likewise to blush with shame."